A protest in Hong Kong demanding the release of Liu Xiaobo, 29 June 2017. Photograph: PA Images/Chan Long Hei/Zuma Press

Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident intellectual, has died at the age of 61. Perry Link pays tribute to him in the New York Review of Books, and proposes a comparison to Xi Jinping – 200 years from now, ‘will the glint of Liu Xiaobo’s incisive intellect be remembered, or the cardboard mediocrity of Xi’s?’